3 Ways to Protect Yourself from Breast Cancer

3 Ways to Protect Yourself from Breast Cancer

Dr. Gary Huber : Head Medical Ego

Omega 3 Fats: These are the best fats to eat for a multitude of reasons. They represent the most anti-inflammatory fat in the body and reduce joint, brain, bowel and overall body inflammation. They are found most abundantly in fish and fish oil. These wonderful fats keep your brain healthy and aid the cells ability to communicate with each other. They also help insulin receptors to function better so your body doesn’t become insulin resistant (diabetes). Omega 3 fats reduce the risk of insulin resistance, heart disease, hypercholesterolemia, depression, headaches, joint pain, and BREAST cancer. Do not use flax seed OIL. It is the most unstable of all the oils and oxidizes easily. Do eat ground flax seeds regularly. Buy it whole and grind up 2 tablespoons in a coffee mill to sprinkle on your salad or throw into your protein smoothie. Just remember that inflammation leads to cancer and these fats are anti-inflammatory.

Most people eat too much processed food that contains lots of omega 6 inflammatory fats. You need to get plenty of omega 3 to offset this dynamic and try to keep your omega 6 to omega 3 fat ratio at a healthy 2 to 1.

Action: Eat fish (salmon is best) at least once a week and preferably twice a week or more. Eat ground flax seed, 2 tablespoons per day. Take a fish oil capsules on days you don’t eat fish or even daily. Fish oil at a dose of 1500...

7 Steps to Breast Cancer Reduction

7 Steps to Breast Cancer Reduction

Jo Wehage : Head Operations Ego

When it comes to chronic disease, breast cancer often takes center fear-stage in the hearts of American women. While I’m thrilled for the outreach and resources to women who have been impacted by this devastating disease, I also want to focus on the empowerment, not the fear, that should come with medical research and advancements.

Let’s take a breath and focus on the active things the majority of us can do to keep breast cancer out of our hearts and bodies.

Where has all the progesterone gone? As women approach menopause progesterone levels decrease and the now more-abundant estrogen can trigger the well-know menopausal symptoms and put your health at risk. While many women are now widely aware of the dangers of hormone replacement therapy there still remains more viable options for those faced with menopausal symptoms. Talk to a qualified practitioner about bio-identical hormones or consider speaking with a practitioner familiar with the herbal remedy, black cohosh.

In a 2007 epidemiological study, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that women who had taken black cohosh supplements had a 61 percent lower risk of developing breast cancer.

Chill out While scientists have long-suspected a correlation between stress and cancer risk, researchers at UCLA now think they have found the mechanism at play. Stress appears to act as a “fertilizer” of sorts that helps promote breast cancer progression and distant site metastasis. Stress seems to reprogram immune-boosting cells that once helped fight cancer into metastasis-promoting cells. Researchers found a 30-fold increase in cancer spread throughout the body in animal models.

The good news is that researchers were able to block these negative changes in the immune cells by shutting down the stress pathways. In the short term research they used drugs, but they emphasize the role that natural stress reduction can play in humans.

Don’t puff it, snuff it Multiple studies for years have shown that tobacco increases the chance of breast cancer. A 2002 study by the researchers at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine found that the more cigarettes women smoked and the longer they kept up the habit, the higher their risk of developing the disease.

Knock back a few less Just two drinks of alcohol a day have been shown to significantly increase breast cancer risk, according to multiple studies.

Don’t tip the scale Women who are overweight or obese after menopause are at increased risk of developing breast cancer. A 2002 study by the American Cancer Society estimated that 30 to 50 percent of breast cancer deaths among postmenopausal women in the US may be attributed to obesity.

Move it In a 2003 study from the national Women’s Healthy Initiative, women who walked briskly for a couple hours every week had an 18 percent lower risk of breast cancer than sedentary wo...

New Mammogram Recommendations

New Mammogram Recommendations

Dr. Gary Huber : Head Medical Ego

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services just released their recommendation for the use of mammograms in breast cancer detection last week and it caused quite an uproar. Allow me to present them as they appear on the government website so that there is no chance of misinterpretation:

The USPSTF (US Preventative Service Task Force) recommends against routine screening mammography in women aged 40 to 49 years. The decision to start regular, biennial screening mammography before the age of 50 years should be an individual one and take patient context into account, including the patient’s values regarding specific benefits and harms.

The USPSTF concludes that the current evidence is insufficient to assess the additional benefits and harms of screening mammography in women 75 years or older.

All I can say is . . . wow.

While many groups see this as a careless attempt to save funds and put women’s lives at risk, as a medical practitioner, I have to say I agree with their findings.The recommendation is not surprising in light of all the evidence regarding mammograms; I just can’t believe they said it out loud.

You have to understand that the American Cancer Society has a strong relationship with the manufacturers of mammography equipment and so these strong ties have led to questionable health recommendations for women for years. I am delighted that finally a larger body of influence such as the Department of Health & Human Services has made a stand to push the agenda of women’s health out of the dark ages.

Mammograms are not very efficient at detecting breast cancer and as a tool they offer some significant penalties to their users. Each mammogram delivers 1 Rad of radiation to breast tissue which can actually cause damage to breast tissue. Each mammogram increases a women’s risk for developing breast cancer by 1 to 2 percent per mammogram and the effect is cumulative. The compression used to obtain an optimal view is not only painful but potentially hazardous as is may rupture small blood vessels around yet undetected breast tumors causing spread of tumor cells throughout the body.

I also want to draw attention to the recommendation for “biennial” not yearly screenings for women aged 50 and above. This is every two years. And note that this is a “Grade B recommendation” meaning that it has the potential for moderate benefit. A “Grade A recommendation” is one of high certainty that benefit is substantial. There are no Grade A recommendations in the field of mammography.

So what are women to do? Are you left out in the cold to fend for yourself against the number 1 killer of women aged 40 to 55? No, of course not. There is a safe and simple technology that has been ignored by mainstream medicine, at least in...